ARES. – “Ares, the Greek god of war. For some his name would mean ‘the destroyer,’ but the etymology is disputed. To the ancients he was Thracian and therefore foreign; to some moderns he is a Greek god, to others he is originally from Thrace or Caria. In the Iliad he is the son of Zeus and Dione; he embodies wild and irrational martial fury, the craze for destruction, blood and slaughter; he is disliked by the gods, despised and hated; the Arcadians shut him up in a bronze cask so that he would not devastate Thessaly. The Homeric portrait also influenced later ages. Only the late Homeric Hymn, identifying Ares with the planet Mars, makes him a beneficent god, defender of justice.
Ares’ primitive nature has been traced back to a chthonic deity: some have made him a primitive god of vegetation, others of the storm, or a pre-Hellenic underworld god to whom the Erinyes would correspond; in fact, according to a Theban saga, Ares would have had as his wife Tilphossa, one of the Erinyes, and their son would have been the serpent slain by Cadmus. The Arcadian cult at Tegea, where only women sacrificed to him, has been regarded as ancient. The most common epithet of Ares is Enyalios, who perhaps originally was an independent god and was later absorbed by Ares.
Ares is associated with female deities whom he is considered to have married: Enyo in Thessaly (for some she was instead his mother), Aglauros in Athens, Tilphossa or Aphrodite in Thebes, etc. Perhaps from the Theban tradition arose the legend of Ares’ love affair with Aphrodite, already recalled in the Odyssey. Ares has no votive inscriptions and only exceptionally dedications; no city regarded him as its protector, few offered him cult, and even fewer had a temple (Athens, Geronthrai where women could not enter the temple, Dreros, Troezen). As Enyalios he was especially venerated at Sparta. At Rome he was identified with Mars, while in Enyalios Romans recognized Quirinus. To the ancients Ares was a bearded adult man, clad in heavy armor with helmet, sword and spear; from the 5th century BC onward he was depicted as young and nude.